It is 1535, and in the tumultuous years of King Henry VIII's break from Rome, the religious houses of England are being, seized by force. Twenty-year-old Catherine Havens is a foundling and the adopted daughter of the prioress of the Priory of Mount Grace in a small Yorkshire village. Catherine, like her adoptive mother, has a gift for healing, and she is widely, sought and admired for her knowledge. However, the king's divorce dashes Catherine's...

Jan van Eyck was a fifteenth century Netherlandish painter of altarpieces, single-panel religious figures and commissioned portraits, who perfected the newly developed technique of oil painting. Panel paintings like the 'Arnolfini Portrait' and 'The Ghent Altarpiece' are celebrated for their unprecedented use of naturalism, complex iconography and geometric perspective. Although only 22 paintings are confidently attributed to Van Eyck, his virtuosity...

Rome: In the small church of Santa Giuliana, a magnificent Caravaggio altarpiece disappears without a trace in the middle of the night. Paris: In the basement vault of the Malevich Society, the curator is shocked to discover the disappearance of the Society's great treasure, White on White by Suprematist painter Kasimir Malevich. London: At the National Gallery of Modern Art, the museum's newest acquisition is stolen just hours after it was purchased...

Jan van Eyck left behind a remarkable legacy of works, including the spectacular Ghent altarpiece, but very little evidence of who he exactly was. van Eyck was a key figure in the early northern renaissance that would produce further great masters such as Hans Holbein and Albrecht Durer. After he died, his reputation would only grow and grow, and his paintings would become highly sought after by buyers and thieves alike and, in the process, the mysterious...

Albrecht Dürer, who lived from 1471 to 1528, worked during the time of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. Typical of his era, religion was the subject of most of his creative work. We know more about Dürer than many artists of his day, thanks to his proclivity with the pen as well as with his paintbrush. He was also widely known across Europe during his lifetime because much of his work was disseminated by printing. Dürer left a considerable...

The forgotten cafe where Fidel Castro and Che Guevara used to meet, a tribute to the city's ghosts, a mammoth in the metro, a cave transformed into a shrine, an underground parking lot with mosaics dating from 1930, a Baroque altarpiece made from papier mache, a village based on the principles of Thomas More's Utopia, secret masterpieces of colonial art in rooms only open around two hours a week, the largest roof garden in Latin America, the photo...

Spanish architect and designer, Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) was an important and influential figure in the history of contemporary Spanish art. His use of colour, application of a range of materials and the introduction of organic forms into his constructions were an innovation in the realm of architecture. In his journal, Gaudí freely expressed his own feelings on art, "the colours used in architecture have to be intense, logical and fertile." His...

"The timeless and timely intersect in poems about our unique historical moment, from the prizewinning poet. In Zoom Rooms, Mary Jo Salter considers the strangeness of our recent existence, together with the enduring constants in our lives. The title poem, a series of sonnet-sized Zoom meetings -- a classroom, a memorial service, an encounter with a new baby in the family -- finds humor and pathos in our age of social distancing and technology-induced...